AbstractOBJECTIVE:
There is wide consensus that childhood trauma plays an important role in the aetiology of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The current study examines the differential effects of childhood trauma subtypes on fatigue and physical functioning in individuals suffering from CFS.

METHODS:
Participants were 155 well-documented adult, predominantly female CFS patients receiving treatment at the outpatient treatment centre for CFS of the Antwerp University Hospital in Belgium. Stepwise regression analyses were conducted with outcomes of the total score of the Checklist Individual Strength (CIS) measuring fatigue and the scores on the physical functioning subscale of the Medical Outcomes Short Form 36 Health Status Survey (SF-36) as the dependent variables, and the scores on the five subscales of the Traumatic Experiences Checklist (TEC) as the independent variables.

CONCLUSION:
Of the childhood trauma subtypes investigated, sexual harassment emerged as the most important predictor of fatigue and poor physical functioning in the CFS patients assessed. These findings have to be taken into account in further clinical research and in the assessment and treatment of individuals coping with chronic fatigue syndrome.

So much wrong with this, (and I've only read the abstract) from the very first words in the introduction. As far as I know there is no proven connection between childhood trauma and ME.

As I understand it, they were trying to find out whether there was any connection between the type of childhood trauma and the severity of the symptoms. They mostly found there wasn't, apart from a slightly statistically significant correlation between severity of symptoms and sexual harassment.
They deduce that the sexual harassment caused the more severe symptoms.

This is statistically ignorant.
1.
First, this seems to be a classic case of p hacking. Carry out lots of statistical tests on a pile of data. Look for any that happen to fall just below the magic p = 0.05 level, and attribute meaning to what is probably a chance variation. If you do enough statistical tests on a completely random set of data, some of them are sure to fall in the p less than 0.05 category by chance. That's why psychologists love p hacking - they can do lots of questionnaires, run them through stats packages they probably barely understand, search for magic numbers less than 0.05, and hey presto, a published paper. They have 'discovered' something. And then no one else can replicate it, because it was just random variation.

So they do some correlations and find most are not statistically significant, but, lucky for them, one is (slightly).

2.
Secondly, assume correlation implies causation.
They find most of the factors they studied were not statistically significant, but luckily one was, so they build a theory around it. They already 'know' childhood trauma is a causative factor (not), now they have a great discovery - it's childhood sexual harassment that 'causes' worse symptoms.

NO. Statistics lesson 1 : Correlation does not imply causation.

Aaaargh!

By the way, @Countrygirl , you might want to change the thread title. As I understand it, they are not saying harassment causes ME. They are saying it causes ME severity.

That has just broken the world record for ringing my alarm bells in the fewest number of words. Any time I hear "everyone knows that ..." or "it stands to reason that ..." or "it is common knowledge that ..." it's a signal that someone is about to make a claim for which they do not wish to be put to the trouble of providing evidence.

To start your scientific paper with "There is wide consensus that ...", well it stands to reason that what follows is highly likely to be complete bo***cks.

Anyway, I'm waiting for the Science Media Center's Expert Reaction before deciding what I think.

Reduced physical functioning is another important behavioural symptom in
CFS [1].

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This sounds a bit dodgy, recruiting for both a genetic study and a psychosocial study at the same time. I'd be curious to see what the patients were told on the consent forms. Also, it's a psychosomatic fatigue center (presumably the "Behaviour Therapy Division for Fatigue and Functional Symptoms"), and the CDC criteria don't require a patient to have PEM. And I'm not sure how they diagnose CFS via physical examination and lab measurements:

A total of 558 adult patients receiving treatment at the outpatient clinic at the outpatient clinic for CFS of the Antwerp University Hospital in Belgium were invited by letter to take part in our and a genetic study [25]. All patients had been diagnosed with CFS by an experienced internist according to the Centre for Disease Control criteria [1] using serial physical examinations and laboratory measurements.

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Probably a lot of self-selection bias in this sample, since a large majority declined to participate. And the 558 were selected by the researchers themselves, not randomly, which would allow for them to "approach" patients who they knew had some childhood trauma:

Of the 558 patients we approached, 168 responded to the invitation and attended the test sessions (response rate: 30.1%).

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It's sloppy to include people with mood disorders which can cause fatigue in research, especially when using a poor diagnostic criteria like Fukuda:

Besides CFS, 34.2% of the participants were also suffering from fibromyalgia and 48.4% had a current or past major depression and/or anxiety disorder.

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This suggests that their result was a fluke, which is to be expected when comparing numerous childhood trauma subscales to a fatigue and physical functioning scale. If sexual adversity of some sort were correlated to CFS symptoms, it would be expected that worse adversity (sexual abuse) would have more of an impact than sexual harassment, not less impact:

Still, it is important to emphasize that in our study it was the TEC sexual harassment subscale, and not its sexual abuse subscale, that was predictive of later-life elevated fatigue and poor physical functioning. Sexual harassment refers to acts of a sexual nature in terms of unwanted behaviours or approaches that do not involve physical contact.

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Summary: Sloppy quack researchers produce sloppy quack research, and spin it a lot to prop up their pathetic careers. Poor patient selection practice, retrospective methodology, failure to correct for multiple comparisons, ignoring of contrary evidence, and a lax statistical threshold for correlations make this study yet another waste of time and resources.

"Women have wandering wombs which rule their minds, they must be masturbated by their medical professionals to relieve the symptoms of hysteria!"
That was the ACTUAL belief and *practice* of the medical profession for decades.
A large part of the reason for the development of the Hitachi "magic wand" was to rest the over worked hands of "doctors" (seriously)

IMHO the only "sexual abuse" issue with ME/CFS, is that the medical professionals seem to be the ones with an excessive interest in it, so one must ask the question: WHY?
were they abused as children, or does the issue arouse them, or give them excuses to abuse victims?
In any event, they are QUACKS and fraudsters, possibly degenerate perverts, who have bugger all to do with treating the sick.

Those who wrote this paper should be criminally investigated, IMHO, for medical fraud and abuse of patients, possibly worse.
There is no legitimate excuse for conflating a dreadful physical ailment with childhood sexual abuse, NONE.
This kind of bullshit is driven purely by the mentality, arrogance, stupidity or criminality of the so-called "researchers/doctors".
Physical evidence of ME/CFS goes back SIXTY YEARS but has been deliberately ignored.
Freudian psychiatry has been exposed as a twisted inept unscientific load of BULLSHIT, and it ha sno legitimate place in modern medicine.

FYI, from my knowledge, I'd suggest around 1/3rd of all children are sexual or violently abused, all those who say "oh it's only bad nowadays!" are at best, ignorant, it was RIFE when I was a kid we just didn't see it much or hear of it, I wonder oh I wonder why it was squelched so damned hard by the media etc?
From my own experiences with violence and sadistic abuse, the authorities were far more interested in protecting the "reputations" of their schools etc, than protecting children.

I'm not a psychopath, I have had to deal with actual convicted psychopaths even *as a kid*, and I learned the hard way that the only way to deal with scum is to be utterly merciless and brutal if you wish to survive their appalling actions once they start on you, alas
They have no concepts of respect, moderation, consequences of their actions for others, or compassion.
I've also dealt with sociopaths and people who chose to be evil.
I am not exaggerating, I have dealt with very, very malign people And some of them I kicked their damn balls into cubes
Alas too many children and adults have not had such luck in dealing with the swine, especially because of the cowards, perverts, sadists, stupid and selfish bastards who help cover such stuff up.

Fortunately, the vast majority of my friends, family neighbours etc, were lovely people (same with most any people anywhere in the world!)
Human vermin are rare, it's just they go out of their way to cause trouble and thus their evil deeds are out of proportion for their numbers, and you remember trauma much more than cuddles and laughter because of the danger.

So if sexual abuse of children was the cause of ME/CFS or other "medically unexplained illness", the incidence would be truly catastrophic and you'd have hundreds of millionsor even a billion or more with the illnesses.

I'd have these words BURNED a foot high into the walls of the British Medical Association with a plasma cutter as a lesson and warning for history.​

First the psychosocial researchers claimed that they were being harrassed by patients. Now they are claiming on our behalf that patients must have suffered harrassment. The researchers' claims that they were harrassed have been found to be fictional. Their claims that patients must have been harrassed have been disproven. They are clearly suffering from Harrassment Fixation Disorder, as they are incapable of viewing this illness in any other terms and see harrassment everywhere they look.

Sexual harrassment did contribute/part cause my CFS. But I was 19 at the time, not a child. At work, (sexually harassed by an AJAX footy player) and he 'literally' gave me glandular fever. I wonder if glandular fever is psychological too